Introduction: The State of Trans* in (US) German Studies 1 DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 Introduction: The State of Trans* in (US) German Studies Cedar Lensing-Sharp and J� Rafael Balling University of California, Los Angeles / University of Washington How do we “do” trans* in German Studies? 1 This question already felt urgent and overdue in September 2022, when we convened a roundtable at the annual German Studies Association conference in Houston, Texas� We, a group of USbased German Studies scholars invested in work on trans* literature, history, and culture in German-speaking contexts, had come together to discuss what it means to bring trans* studies into German Studies, and vice versa� Many of us were still graduate students eager to participate in what we hoped would be a significant intervention in our field, which up to that point had lagged behind in recognizing the necessity of bringing trans* studies into more frequent dialogue with German Studies� These questions were timely not only for our discipline, but increasingly for domestic politics in the United States as well� When we met in Texas in 2022, we found ourselves witnessing an orchestrated and global attack on gender-variant and trans* people’s bodies, families, and rights� In the United States, 2022 had been a record year of anti-trans* legislation, with the introduction of 162 bills by mid-July, targeting especially trans* and nonbinary youth as well as trans* girls in sports� 2 The state of Florida had recently banned gender-affirming (and often lifesaving) Medicaid care for trans* adults� In February, in the state of Texas, the family protective services agency had started to investigate parents of trans* youth who may have provided their children with trans*-affirming care, citing potential “child abuse” (Klibanoff). Beneath the shadow of these legislative encroachments, we gathered to consider what trans* studies has to say to German Studies and what a focus on German-speaking cultures and histories offers to trans* studies. In short, where are we now, and where do we go? Furthermore, what are the stakes of working at this intersection of trans* studies and German Studies? As an interdisciplinary field, trans* studies is concerned with the study of trans* identities, trans* bodies and embodiments, trans* politics and communities� We ask how concepts of trans*ness have been shaped by social, cultural, historical, legal, medical, and political ideas around gender - and how trans* 2 Cedar Lensing-Sharp and J� Rafael Balling DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 people’s understanding of their trans*ness in turn has informed these discourses. Having emerged alongside the field of queer studies in the late 1980s, trans* studies overlaps with but also crucially diverges from its “sibling�” 3 To state it broadly, trans* studies focuses on questions around gender variance rather than issues concerning sexuality and sexual orientation� At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that a neat disentanglement of gender and sexual “non-normativity” is historically not feasible, and much work within trans* studies intentionally refuses this clear distinction� 4 In the past often treated as a subgenre of queer studies, trans* studies offers peculiar thematic approaches and methodologies, some of which even oppose queer studies methods� For instance, trans* studies centers the corporeality and lived experience of trans* people, refusing to reduce trans* bodies to mere allegories for what deconstructionist theorizing in queer studies has denoted as the constitutive instability of gender� 5 Interventions such as Emma Heaney’s The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory (2017) critique these phenomena and trace a genealogy from sexological distillations of trans* feminine narratives to their reflections in early twentieth-century modernist literature and, eventually, key concepts in queer theory� 6 Beyond disciplinary questions of trans* studies, the conceptual terrain mapped by the term “trans*” begins with describing individuals whose lived gender differs from the gender that was imposed upon them by some external authority, whether medical, religious, or governmental, usually at birth� The consolidation of trans* studies as a distinctive scholarly field is usually attributed to Sandy Stone’s landmark essay “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto” of 1987. In a gesture of demanding agency for trans* people, Stone problematized the representation of trans* people through medical authorities and popular discourse, challenged ideas of gender binarism, and critiqued the diagnostic classification of trans*ness as a “mental disorder” through the DSM. 7 Only a few years later, Susan Stryker’s performative writing piece “My Words To Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage” (1994) reclaimed trans* rage through an allegorized appropriation of monstrosity� By rejecting the role of a studied (medical) “object” and instead critically occupying a subject position, these works of the late 1980s and early 1990s marked a decisive break in how trans*ness is mediated both within and outside of academic discourse� Crucial work in recent years has focused on the historic formations of modern Western understandings of trans*ness, especially as a medico-juridical category, providing fundamental insights into the colonial logic of racialization inherent in modern medical trans* diagnosis and making visible the histories and experiences of trans* embodiments beyond hegemonic definitions of trans*ness. 8 As scholars working in this field, the contributors to Introduction: The State of Trans* in (US) German Studies 3 DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 this special issue interrogate the potentials and limitations of literary, poetic, and media representations of gender diversity, asking how categories and concepts that describe trans*ness have emerged and continue to evolve� We do so while being mindful of how we engage historic and contemporary materials that deal with gender variance without disregarding their specific historical, geopolitical, and cultural contexts� 9 Trans* studies productively calls into question the possibility to define trans*ness (Keegan, “Transgender Studies” 66). Within trans* studies, the question of how to name trans*ness has played an important role since the early years of the field. Stone’s aforementioned essay is a decisive rejection of what she understood as the medicalized identity of the “transsexual�” In 1994, Stryker suggested using “transgender” as an umbrella term that refers to all identities or practices that cross over, cut across, move between, or otherwise queer socially constructed sex/ gender boundaries� The term includes, but is not limited to, transsexuality, heterosexual transvestism, gay drag, butch lesbianism, and such non-European identities as the Native American berdache or the Indian Hijra� Like “queer,” “transgender” may also be used as a verb or an adjective (245—55)� In subsequent years, trans* studies scholars have used both “transgender” and (reappropriated versions of) “transsexual” as well as variations of abbreviations such as trans and trans*� In the context of this introduction, we utilize trans* in a way that allows us to cover trans*ness in the broadest possible sense: the added asterisk - a wildcard in computer programming - symbolizes the open-endedness of trans*, as a verb and as an adjective� While trans* can denote a subject position, it also “expresses an infinite number of unfolding causal connections between forms,” expanding the scope of how we theorize trans*ness beyond a mere marker for identity (Keegan, “Transgender Studies” 69; see also Halberstam 4—5, 50—52)� Ethical questions surrounding scholarly approaches to trans* studies centrally inform the essays in this special issue: How can we work with historic materials that contain sensitive data regarding gender transition, for example, a birth name (or “dead name”) with which a person wished not to be associated? How can we engage sexological, psychiatric, and other medical documents, as well as legal material containing sensitive data, such as photos with which a trans* person does not identify or the description of a person’s physical features, in ways that avoid (intentional or unintentional) misgendering? How can we undertake analyses of materials that express pathologizing, moralizing, or otherwise condemnatory language about trans* people without perpetuating or reproducing the harm that such materials have done? These questions are not easy to answer, precisely because gender variant people were themselves 4 Cedar Lensing-Sharp and J� Rafael Balling DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 involved in the production of such discourses and materials� Moreover, since medical discourses and trans*ness are so inextricably linked in Western trans* history, it is sometimes impossible to discern whether their participation was voluntary, and if, where, and to what extent trans* and gender variant people exerted any control over the terms of their presentation� When psychopathological language, concepts, and practices are the means by which trans* identities are rendered broadly legible, then the case study, with its roots in medical and legal forms of knowledge-making, both enables and constrains the terms on which trans* and gender variant people are allowed to construct livable lives (see, e�g�, Linge)� In such circumstances, agency and dependency might become indistin-guishable� In connection with these ethical concerns, we are mindful of the historical and geo-political context in which we produce our scholarship� Working in the US academy today, theoretical and conceptual questions of trans*ness cannot be divorced from our contemporary political context and its material consequences� When we convened at the GSA conference in 2022, attacks on trans* rights in the state of Texas were a reason why numerous scholars, who we had hoped might participate in meaningful dialogue with our roundtable, ultimately decided not to attend the conference� As scholars of German Studies, looking at the European context provided us with an equally grim perspective: many of us had just returned from Germany, where the summer had started with the socalled “Vollbrecht case” and ended with the violent death of a twenty-five-yearold trans* man named Malte (Wiggins)� The Vollbrecht case made plain that academic discourses are not separate from political attacks on trans* people, but rather one of the primary sites of such violence� In July 2022, the Humboldt University in Berlin canceled a talk by Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, a Ph�D� candidate in marine biology, titled “Geschlecht ist nicht (Ge)schlecht - Sex, Gender und warum es in der Biologie zwei Geschlechter gibt,” citing security concerns (Braungart)� Soon afterward, scholars of trans* studies pointed out both Vollbrecht’s lack of expertise on the topic and the political polemic she had built around the event, including her understanding of Wissenschaft as providing objective, empirical data needing neither debate nor contextualization� Scholars of trans* history who responded critically on social media were systematically harassed by Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) 10 who were supported by (and, indeed, sought the support of) right-wing and ultra-conservative political groups and actors; for example, the editors of the extreme right Compact magazine and Vollbrecht’s lawyer, Ralf Höcke, who is notorious for having represented extreme-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) politicians from Alice Weidel to Frauke Petry� Vollbrecht went on to deny that trans* people were among the victims of the Nazi regime, with a court eventually ruling that Introduction: The State of Trans* in (US) German Studies 5 DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 Vollbrecht’s statements constituted denial of Nazi crimes (Braungart)� As many scholars of German trans* history have noted, the Vollbrecht case exemplified how different political groups and individual actors, some of whom might otherwise seem to be at odds with one another, frequently close ranks over their shared transphobia� 11 Transphobic politics are not limited by national borders, as demonstrated by the global rise in anti-trans* violence documented by the organization Trans Europe and Central Asia (TGEU)� Their Trans Murder Monitoring Project surpassed 5,000 cases in its 17-year history and noted that the project “documented one of the highest death tolls since its beginning in 2008” with 350 murders of trans* people across the world in 2024 (“Will the cycle of violence ever end? ”)� These statistics illustrate the incredible urgency of reflecting on the interconnectedness of transphobic discourses and politics across countries and continents� The UK has seen a sharp rise in stigmatizing and inaccurate representations of trans* people in journalistic media, as well as increasing curtailments of trans*-affirming medical care for young people, as seen in the Bell v. Tavistock lawsuit targeting the UK’s oldest gender clinic and the Cass Review, published in 2024, which influenced the National Health Service to stop prescribing puberty blockers to trans* patients under the age of 16 (McMillan)� 12 As scholars of German Studies, we can see the specificity of the German context: the Vollbrecht case, as mentioned, quickly (and somewhat predictably) became a debate about queer victims of the Nazi regime, with TERFs intentionally excluding trans* people from the victim groups of Nazism� The case cannot be divorced from its immediate political context, either: in 2022, there were intense legal debates surrounding the introduction of the new “Selbstbestimmungsgesetz” - a self-identification law for trans* and nonbinary people that would replace the former law regulating trans* issues, the Transsexuellengesetz (TSG). The TSG, in place since 1980, was a watershed moment in German trans* history and culture, as it shaped the lives of many trans* people in Germany until very recently in decisive ways� The ability to legally change one’s sex marker, for instance, involved compulsory sterilization for all trans* people until 2011, when the respective subparagraph of the TSG was blocked through a decree by the German Federal Constitutional Court, deeming it unconstitutional (“Order of the First Senate of 11 January 2011”)� The German government accepted the new self-ID law on April 12, 2024. It became effective on November 1, 2024 (“Self-Determination Act passed German Parliament”)� The histories of trans*, gender variant, and queer people in the context of biopolitical violence and persecution in Nazi Germany remains an important subject of scholarship in our field, 13 just as the histories and cultural production of trans* and gender variant people in other eras are due for scholarly attention� 6 Cedar Lensing-Sharp and J� Rafael Balling DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 In the aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, we are confronted with a political climate of acute transphobia, heated up by a Republican campaign that made anti-trans* rhetoric one of its core political talking points and invested more than two-hundred million dollars in anti-trans* ads� The new president, Donald Trump, “has pledged numerous actions against transgender people, from investigating educators to banning gender-affirming care for youth and ending legal recognition for transgender individuals” (Reed 2024)� In a time of acute political backlash both in the US and Europe, it is difficult to catch up with the constraints put on trans* lives, but a few recent incidences include the intent to upend gender affirming care for trans* minors in the US ( United States v. Skrmetti ), German Federal Minister of the Interior Alexander Dobrindt’s draft bill to introduce an extra register for trans*, inter, and gender variant people who used the new self-ID law in Germany (Groß), and a UK Supreme Court ruling on April 16, 2025 (“ For Women Scotland v. The Scottish Ministers ”) that legally defined “sex” as a person’s sex assigned at birth (Frayer). As the threat of potential cuts in funding and restrictions around teaching trans* studies loom, this issue brings together a broad array of recent research around trans*ness that shows the field’s acute relevance and crucial importance for German Studies. Just as many trans* histories have yet to be unearthed and examined in a scholarly context, so, too, does the literary and artistic output of trans* people deserve greater attention� The essays collected in this special issue showcase not only exciting new work on trans* subjects and texts that have received relatively little scholarly treatment up to now, but also reflections on methodology and the necessity of positioning this work in relation to the field of trans* studies as it continues to evolve� Much scholarship at the intersection of trans* and German Studies, including some of the essays in this issue, focuses on the Weimar and Nazi eras with good reason, considering the surge in both visibility and persecution of trans* and gender variant people during these periods� But there is also cause to look to earlier historical moments, bringing trans* studies analytics to bear on figures and texts that might otherwise escape our notice when declarations of gender variance fall outside of the language we expect� Elizabeth Schoppelrei’s “Trans Revising/ Revising Trans” examines a poem, “Der Transvestit,” published in the lesbian magazine Die Freundin on three successive occasions, in 1924, 1928, and 1929, each time with revisions. The poem’s author, whose name was revised at each publication, also reworks the text’s assumptions about femininity and clothing� Schoppelrei argues that we must pay attention to the poetry in Die Freundin and other such queer and trans* magazines of the Weimar Republic, which are almost always examined for their reportage or short fiction, though they often contained poems as well. Schoppelrei’s reading of the poem is enriched by discussion of the obituary of a gender-diverse circus Introduction: The State of Trans* in (US) German Studies 7 DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 performer, Ella Zoyara, which physically surrounds the inset poem on the page� Magnus Hirschfeld’s translation and republication of this obituary, Schoppelrei argues, opens up generative possibilities for reading and writing trans* lives via the processes of revision and translation� On the basis of this analysis, Schoppelrei puts forward a concept of a trans* poetics of revision, through which the poem’s author expresses an evolving sense of trans*ness and of self� In “The Unfinished Business of Trans German Studies,” Hazel Rhodes reflects on how and why trans* studies was strongly presaged in German movements for gender and sex liberation - such as by Magnus Hirschfeld - and yet, work on trans*ness in German Studies has been discontinuous� It is, Rhodes writes, in a bold provocation for the field, “radically unfinished.” Rhodes reviews some reasons for this, among them the relative slowness with which German academia integrated feminist studies, the predominance of medical models of trans*ness in German scholarly contexts, and tensions within scholarship and communities between, to borrow Sedgwick’s terms, minoritizing and universalizing models� Rhodes suggests some pathways out of these binds� In “‘Warum ward ich kein Mann! ’: Karoline von Günderrode as Proto-Transmasculine Poet,” Cedar Lensing-Sharp rereads Karoline von Günderrode’s 1804 poem “Darthula nach Ossian,” together with a letter that von Günderrode wrote to her sister about the basis for the poem� Feminist readings of the poem have argued that it creates an imaginary space for women on the battlefield, a space of masculinity, and that von Günderrode’s expressions in her letters of the desire to be a man are about her frustration with patriarchy� Without disputing those readings necessarily, Lensing-Sharp asks, “What if, when figures from history told us about their gender, we took them at their word? ” Lensing-Sharp brings a trans* analysis to the poem, and through close reading, argues that it expresses a desire for a cross-gender embodiment, and that von Günderrode is a proto-transmasculine poet� In Simone Stirner’s “Translucent Memories: Trans* Remembrance and the Case of Charlotte Charlaque,” we are confronted with German public memory culture’s long failure to include LGBTQ victims of fascism� Stirner argues for modes of remembering particularly trans* suffering, as well as trans* survival, outside of the institutions of public memory� Compounding the challenge is the fact that trans* archives are fragmentary, shot through by absences, as is the case for the archival traces of the actress Charlotte Charlaque (1892-1963). “Translucent memory,” Stirner writes, drawing on Donna Haraway and Saidiya Hartman, can follow the traces of Charlaque’s life across archival silences, and in unexpected places - a quilt, digital markers of places she lived, and in a fictional film. Charlaque’s story thus becomes “a constantly changing, multifaceted event in the present,” and in elaborating such a public memory of Charlaque, 8 Cedar Lensing-Sharp and J. Rafael Balling DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 Stirner not only asks how Germany’s public memory culture fails to include LGBTQ victims of fascism, but shows how in order to remedy this, it would have to also undertake a remaking of the very structures of public memory� “No Way Home: Bad Trans* Feelings in Jayrôme Robinet’s Sonne in Scherben (2024)” by J� Rafael Balling discusses Robinet’s recent novel in the context of its use of original media material, actual events, and increasing anti-trans* legislation in Germany and France� Balling argues that the story of a pregnant trans* man, set in the early 2000s and loosely based on historic cases such as the highly publicized pregnancies of Thomas Beatie and Trystan Reese, exemplifies how a thoroughly transphobic societal atmosphere accumulates into “bad” feelings� This especially includes the feeling of trans* fatigue - a state of exhaustion grounded in a sense of not being able to find repose in the steady rhythm of mundane life� At the end, it is the illusion of a home, created by the protagonist’s partner in order to facilitate a fleeting moment of happiness, that converts trans* unhomeliness into a transient home� In “Trans German Studies, A Conversation,” Laurie Marhoefer and Sara Friedman talk about the promise of trans* studies for German Studies, as well as some of the challenges, the hopes for new scholarship, and the fears of a right-wing backlash following the 2024 presidential election in the United States� Confronting the political precarity of this moment, this special issue is meant to serve as a starting point to reflect on the myriad ways we might do trans* in (US) German Studies� The essays in this issue provoke our ways of analyzing past and present trans* and gender-variant identities and embodiments and shed light on pressing questions connected to trans* histories, politics, and cultures - in Germany, the US, and beyond� By bringing together several strands of exciting new work, we ultimately hope to encourage the proliferation of further projects in German Studies that engage with trans* themes, methods, and frameworks� In this sense, this issue is intended to guide interested students as well as emerging scholars in the field to develop their own pathways into (re) thinking vital questions at the intersection of trans* and queer studies, German history, literary, film and cultural studies. Especially in this very moment of history, we will need it� Notes 1 We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful and thoughtful reading of our pieces and the valuable and generous feedback� Thank you to Laurie Marhoefer for his contribution to this introduction� Trans scholar Sandy Stone was asked the question “How do we do trans* studies? ” at the first International Trans* Studies Conference on September 7, Introduction: The State of Trans* in (US) German Studies 9 DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 2016. In taking it up and applying it to the field of German Studies, we regard the project of this special issue as forming part of the ongoing discussion of what trans* studies can look like� 2 Sadly, this number has been far surpassed in the years since the roundtable took place. As of March 2025, at least 800 anti-trans* bills have been introduced across the United States, according to journalist Erin Reed� Though a majority of these bills have failed to pass thus far, it is clear that legislative attempts to constrain and erase the lives of trans* youth and adults have reached the level of public crisis� For details, see Reed 2025 a� 3 In a critique of queer studies’ failure to substantially integrate and theorize trans*, Susan Stryker has called trans* studies the “evil twin” of queer studies (Stryker 213)� 4 See, for instance: Boyd; Carlson; Cromwell; Hale (1996); Lochrie; Nataf; and Rubin� 5 Important discussions of queer theory’s tendency to allegorize trans*ness has also been voiced by Hale (1997); Prosser; Namaste; and Love� Talia M� Bettcher has offered a critique of strands of queer-feminist scholarship that frame trans* bodies as “constructed as constructions” (298) within social constructivist theorizing, opposing many trans* people’s sense of the “realness” of their embodied sex/ gender� 6 Further works that trace the genealogies and processes of differentiation between feminist, queer, and trans* theories and the respective academic fields, include, for instance: Halley; Wiegman; and Halberstam. More recent critical overviews of the struggles of differentiation between methods and fields from within trans* studies have been offered by Awkward-Rich as well as Keegan 2020 a, b� 7 The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) ceased to list trans* as a mental disorder in 2013� Trans* people now appear under the section of “gender dysphoria” (GD), focusing on the distress trans* people face in society rather than treating trans*ness as a pathology� 8 See, for instance: Snorton; Gill-Peterson; Marhoefer (2022); and Bauer� 9 See Bychowski et al� for a recent treatment of the question of presentism in trans* studies as it intersects with history� 10 “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” or TERFs is a phrase used to describe individuals who assert the tenets of radical feminism in a way that excludes trans* women, i�e�, considers trans* women not to be women as such� This phrase is used exclusively by those criticizing those who hold such beliefs; many TERFs self-identify as “gender critical,” particularly in the UK, and are more broadly anti-trans* (rather than solely excluding trans* women)� TERFs may also be something of a misnomer, as these in- 10 Cedar Lensing-Sharp and J� Rafael Balling DOI 10.24053/ CG-59-0001 dividuals are not always feminists to begin with, and many ally themselves with far-right conservative politics rather than left-wing feminism� 11 The forming of such seemingly unlikely political coalitions is a widespread phenomenon� One of the most prominent examples is children’s author J�K� Rowling’s increasingly public opposition to trans* rights� In 2024, Rowling donated £70,000 to the organization For Women Scotland , whose challenge to a Scottish law that recognized trans* women as women was ultimately brought to the UK Supreme Court; the court ruled unanimously in April 2025 that trans* women are not considered women under UK law (Adamczeski)� An example in the context of US politics is the New York Times ’ series of opinion pieces that question science-based support for trans* care for minors (see Reed 2025 b; Feder)� Further, Democratic politicians such as Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom have adopted transphobic talking points around trans* women in sports, moving closer to the rhetoric of their conservative political opponents (see Padilla; Riedel)� Both Buttigieg and Newsom expressed concerns about “fairness” in the question of whether trans* women and girls should be allowed to compete in athletic competitions against cis women and girls, a framing used by conservative anti-trans* pundits and politicians that is not supported by scientific evidence (see Hamilton 2021; Hamilton 2024)� 12 See, for instance, a recent bonus episode of the podcast Maintenance Phase titled “Breaking Down the Latest Anti-Trans Victory Lap” (see Gordon and Hobbes)� Thank you to the anonymous reviewer for alerting us to that� 13 See important recent contributions to German trans*/ queer history by authors such as Ashton; Garde; Bauer; Evans; Hájková; Huneke; Linge; Marhoefer; Nunn; Sutton; and Tobin� Works Cited Adamczeski, Ryan� “J�K� Rowling uses Harry Potter wealth to fund anti-transgender organization�” advocate.com . 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